ARCHIVED - Broadcasting Commission Letter Addressed to Erin Finlay (Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA))

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Ottawa, 3 October 2017

BY EMAIL: erin.finlay@cmpa.ca

Ms. Erin Finlay
Chief Legal Officer
Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA)
160 John Street, 5th floor
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 2E5

Ms. Finlay,

Re: Reconsideration and hearing of the licence renewal decisions for the large private English-language ownership groups (Broadcasting Decisions 2017-148 to 2017-151)

This is in response to your letter sent to the Commission on 15 September 2017 in which you provided comments on the procedure with respect to Order in Council PC 2017-1060 (the Order), issued on 14 August 2017, regarding Broadcasting Decisions CRTC 2017-148 to 2017-151 (the Decisions).  As described below, we have already taken the first steps in the reconsideration process, consistent with the Order and the Commission’s normal procedures.

In your letter, you requested, amongst other things, that the Commission administratively renew the licences that were expiring 31 August 2017 until the Commission reconsiders and renders its decisions. Please note that the Order did not set aside the Decisions mentioned above. Instead, as provided by section 28 of the Broadcasting Act, the Order instructed the Commission to reconsider certain aspects of the Decisions. Accordingly, the licences approved in these Decisions came into effect on 1 September 2017 and will remain in force while the Commission reconsiders aspects of these Decisions pursuant to the Order.

The Commission will publish a Notice of Consultation shortly to seek public comments related to the reconsideration of the Decisions. For the purpose of this process, the large private ownership groups have been asked to update their original licence renewal applications.

To ensure consistency between this process and the original licence renewal process (Notice of Consultation 2016-225), the public record of the latter will be added to the record of the process to come.

Sincerely,

Peter Foster
Acting Executive Director, Broadcasting

cc: Sylvie Courtemanche, Corus Entertainment Inc. 
Susan Wheeler, Rogers Media Inc.
Kevin Goldstein, Bell Media Inc.

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